Like a Horse and Carriage
by saoulbete
Summary: "Janey, Sweetie, when are you going to get married?" Angela Rizzoli was always a firm believer that the path to happiness was being married with a family, and what mother doesn't want to see their children happy? c


"Janey, sweety, when are you going to do the grown up thing and get married?" She rolled her eyes, trying to stare pointedly at the crossword, giving every hint she could think of short of telling her mother to buzz off that she didn't want to do this. Especially not at eight in the morning.

"Ma, I've told you, I don't want to get married." She found herself doing more work on the goatee she was currently giving to _Doonesbury_ than actually being able to solve any of the clues,

"I don't understand why you're so opposed to the idea."

"Just – because." She scowled, her goatee quickly becoming her scratching out every character in the strip's face. She didn't really feel like discussing her current relationship status with her mother, not this early in the morning before she finished her first cup of coffee.

"But you and Maura would be so cute in matching-" She was almost disappointed that there wasn't a camera trained on her at that moment. She was sure the spit-take she did was so incredibly perfect that it could be used as an instructional video. She sat there, choking for what felt like an hour, as her mother stood there, arms crossed. "What? It's legal here, and you know how much I've always wanted to see you get married."

This was _not_ the way she had intended on getting her mother's blessing for their relationship. After all, they were just starting to get used to what it was that they were. Their relationship had morphed, evolved in so many different ways that _they_ weren't sure what it was that they had. The announcements, the making it official – they'd been sort of putting it off, choosing instead to let everyone continue believing whatever it was that they believed about them. Most people had already thought they were a couple, anyway, and at this point announcing it just seemed like a redundancy. She'd been trying to avoid the subject with her mother for as long as possible – not because she didn't want her mother to know, but because she didn't want to see the disappointment when she said that somewhere along the way she'd realized that she was madly in love with another woman. "You – you -" Was what she managed to stammer out once she got enough breath to form words again.

"I what? Knew about you two?" She nodded, wondering how Angela had figured it out. "Sweetie, I'm your mother. I see how you two are. You couldn't be more cute together if you tried. And I'm not going to let a little technicality like _who_ you're dating stop me from wanting to see you married. Or giving me lots of grandkids to spoil rotten." She groaned, before attempting to wipe off the paper enough to continue with the crossword puzzle.

"Please tell me you haven't had this conversation with Maura." Her mother smiled at her, in a way that made Jane's stomach clench. That was her mother's _well I hadn't even thought about it, but now that you mention it- _smile. "Ma – don't even think about it."

"Why not? What's wrong with wanting you to get married and have a family? I'm an open minded woman, Janey. I always wanted a doctor in the family, why not make it official?"

"I don't need some piece of paper to show that I care about someone, Ma."

"It's not whether or not you're checked off in some book somewhere as married or single. It's about the act itself. You're putting yourself out there in front of everyone and saying that you two love each other and don't ever want to love anyone else. You're putting it out there that you love each other so much that you're willing to make that love permanent and public. It's -"

"Enough." She wondered how her mother could still hold such idealistic views on marriage after the dissolution of the Rizzoli clan. But somehow, Angela still held her old fashioned views that a marriage was a necessary part of a relationship. For all that the Rizzoli matron was claiming to be an open-minded woman, Jane felt strangely as though there was a shotgun being held against her back, forcing her into a wedding. "I'll talk to you later, all right? I've got to get to work." She sighed, heading through security into the bullpen.

She sat heavily behind her desk, collapsing into her chair more than sitting in it. "What's gotten into you, Rizzoli?" She gave a weary look in Korsak's direction.

"Mothers."

"What'd Angela do now?"

"If she asks you to do anything involving wedding plans, run. And tell me, so I can shoot her. I swear I'm going to wake up one day to a surprise wedding." Korsak gave her a sympathetic glance.

"Does she know about you and the Doc?" She shrugged, of course Korsak had figured them out. She was pretty sure Frost and Korsak had known what she had before she did.

"That's the worst part. I swear she's already got everything picked out for us, straight down to baby names."

"Do you want to get married?" She paused. She wasn't sure. The little girly part of her that had always dreamed of a big wedding did. The more pratical part of her was saying that there was no point in it. After all, she knew she wasn't going to find anyone that she loved more than Maura, why did she have to say _I do_ to prove it?

"Yes. No. Maybe." I mean, I do, but I don't. Besides, can you see me in a frilly white dress?" She fought the urge to fling her pencil at Frost's snickering at the idea. "No one asked you, Frost."

"You could just elope." She paused for a second, looking at Frost as though he'd grown two heads.

"Do you know what my mother would do to me if I ran off and got married without telling her? I'd come back in a million itty bitty boxes." Her phone buzzed against her desk and she checked it, glad to find a way out of the current conversation. "C'mon, we've got a dead body."

She could _feel_ Maura's scrutiny as they stood side by side looking at one dead cyclist, a victim of a hit and run. Fairly open and shut –there was no malice, no intrigue, just one man who couldn't drive and had cost another their life. The hard part would be tracking down the driver. But there were a half dozen witnesses, and half of those had gotten partials on the license plate – if it took three days to track down the driver, that would be a lot. "Is everything all right?" Maura asked, after the preliminaries had been dealt with and the body loaded into the coroner's van to take back to the morgue.

"Everything's fine."

"You look stressed." She looked up at Frost, and gestured with her head, an unspoken word that she was catching a ride back from the crime scene with Maura.

"Just, my mother being my mother." Maura looked at her, and she knew what that look meant. There were times she wanted to put either Maura or her mother into the interrogation room with a suspect, because she was sure that either woman's _that_ look would get anyone to spill their guts. "She, uh, knows about us. She started giving me the third degree about weddings. Be careful, I'm afraid she's going to sneak up on us with an ambush ceremony." She didn't like the smile tugging at Maura's lips.

"Would that be a bad thing?"

"What? Getting kidnapped and forced into a dress and dragged in front of a priest to say some silly vows? Yes." The smile fell immediately and she felt a sudden pang of regret as to how she worded things. Did Maura _want_ to get married? The way her face just fell at the idea of a wedding not happening seemed to point to "yes". Part of her wanted to frown at that – she'd thought that Maura was the sort to not want to be married either, to be content with what they had, but she'd just seen the evidence to the opposite. And she hated seeing that forlorn look on Maura's face. If she was outvoted two-to-one on the idea of a wedding, then she supposed she could do the whole fancy ceremony and vows thing after all. She covered the hand that Maura had resting on the gearshift with her own, taking a moment to find her words. "When we get married, I'd want it to be on _our_ terms, not what my mother wants."

"When? That's a pretty big assumption there, Detective." The forlorn look disappeared immediately, replaced by a grin that was infectious. The thought that she could make Maura so happy so easily – that was why she was willing to take a waltz down the aisle. Not because her mother wanted her to. Not because she felt any desire to stand in front of others to prove that she loved someone. But if getting married could make Maura _that_ happy? She would do anything it took.

"Would you really say no?"

"That's besides the point."

"I think I just made the most non romantic proposal on the planet."

"Well why don't we go out for dinner tonight and you can try it again?" She grinned, tangling her fingers with Maura's as they got out of the car, heading up from the parking garage to the station.

"It's a date."


End file.
